Here's what China might do if the US and North Korea went to war

Chinese
troops march during the military parade marking the 70th
anniversary of the end of World War Two, in
BeijingThomson
Reuters

This is an edited excerpt of an interview with Singapore’s
ambassador at large, Bilahari Kausikan, by the international
affairs magazine Global Brief. Bilahari served as the permanent
secretary of the Lion City’s foreign ministry from 2010 to 2013.
He has held various senior positions in the ministry, including
as the city state’s permanent representative in the United
Nations and ambassador to Russia. The original article can be
found here.

ON NORTH KOREA

Question: How should we understand China’s position
on the North Korean crisis?

Bilahari:First of all, we
should understand China’s bottom line position
onNorth
Korea. The Chinese and the North Koreans have never loved
each other, and mutual distrust has grown
underKim
Jong-un, whose aggressive pursuit of an intercontinental
ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the
continental US has diminished Chinese security – for example,
through the deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defence
(THAAD) system in South Korea.

Still, North Korea poses a dilemma to which Beijing has no
solution. Although Beijing has economic leverage over North
Korea, it cannot deploy that leverage to the extent that there is
a risk the regime in Pyongyang will collapse.

But to stopNorth
Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile
programmeswill certainly require pressures
of that magnitude. Pyongyang considers its nuclear weapon and
missile programmes to be existential in nature – vital and
irreplaceable requirements of regime survival.

Since what is at stake for Pyongyang is regime survival, no
sub-existential pressures will dissuade North Korea from pursuing
such programmes – that is, every other cost that could be imposed
by China or anyone else is necessarily a lesser cost.

How can theChinese Communist Party(CCP),
at a time when it is already feeling internally insecure for a
variety of reasons (including because of the cadre shake-up
caused byXi
Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign), be complicit in the
regime change of a fellow Leninist state?

There are, after all, only five Leninist states left in the world
– China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Laos. If the CCP is seen
to be complicit in the destruction of a fellow Leninist state,
that could – and indeed probably will – give the Chinese people
very bad ideas about their own system.

Soldiers
of China's People's Liberation Army march during the military
parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two,
in BeijingThomson
Reuters

For the CCP, that is just too great a risk. The most vital of all
Beijing’s core interests is the preservation of CCP rule.
Measured against that interest, all other risks and interests are
of a second order. So while the Chinese may go along with UN
Security Council sanctions and signal their displeasure to
Pyongyang in other ways, what the Chinese will do on North Korea
will always fall short of American expectations, and short of
what it will take to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear weapon and missile
programmes. This is a reality that the American [government] only
recently and reluctantly has come to recognise, even if I do not
think that most Americans have entirely accepted it yet.

Question: What will China do if North Korea attacks
the U.S.?

Nothing. Or nothing much. Some Chinese media – notably
theGlobal Times–
said, after Kim Jong-un had threatened to bracket Guam with
missiles, that if North Korea started a war with the US, it was
on its own. The Chinese know that a war with the US would
jeopardise the most core of their core interests – namely, the
preservation of CCP rule – because such a war cannot have a
favourable outcome for China.

Question: What will China do if the U.S. attacks
North Korea?

For the same reason – the preservation of CCP rule – China must
respond in some way if the US attacks North Korea. Beijing cannot
stand idly by while the US effects regime change in a fellow
Leninist state. The legitimacy of CCP rule is at stake.

That is why Maoist China, although infinitely weaker than
contemporary China, had to respond during the Korean War and send
signals to the US that it had no choice but to do so.
Unfortunately, those signals were not heeded.

At the same time, I think the Chinese will limit their response,
as they will not want to get into a full-fledged fight with the
US – a fight they know they cannot win.

North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un guides a target-striking contest of the
special operation forces of the Korean People's Army (KPA) to
occupy islands in this undated picture provided by KCNA in
Pyongyang on August 25, 2017.KCNA via
Reuters

The Chinese will therefore do what they can, short of risking
regime change in Pyongyang, to stave off such an American action.

The Trump administration’s approach to North Korea and its
actions in other theatres, such as bombing Syria while President
Trump dined with Xi Jinping, have done much to restore the
credibility of American power. Indeed, President Trump has a
valid point when he says that unpredictability is an asset. The
US under Obama was far too predictable.

Question: Is there an ‘exit’ to the Korean crisis?
What is it?

There is no ‘exit’ if by that we mean denuclearisation. That is a
pipe-dream. It is too late to stop North Korea from eventually
getting the capabilities that it seeks. It can be delayed, but it
will eventually get what it wants. So the only way to deal with
North Korea is how you have dealt with all nuclear weapon states:
through deterrence.

The North Korean leadership may be very brutal, but it is not
mad. Pyongyang is rational and therefore can be deterred. Since
its goal is regime survival, once it has the capability that it
believes it needs to ensure regime survival, there is no reason
for it to risk its own survival.

Of course, a peace treaty with North Korea would allow deterrence
to be maintained at a lower level of tension. This is an idea
worth pursuing seriously in tandem with maintaining deterrence
through a show of overwhelming force. If I have understood
statements by President Trump and US Secretary of State Tillerson
correctly, this is something to which the US administration is
open.

ON CHINA’S FUTURE

China's
President Xi Jinping attends a welcoming ceremony for
Madagascar's President Hery Rajaonarimampianina (not pictured)
outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 27,
2017.REUTERS/Jason
Lee

Question: What are the key economic and general
governance challenges for China over the next three
years?

The key issue confronting China is how to take economic reforms
to the next stage, while maintaining central CCP control.
Everything else is only a matter of detail.

Question: How would you describe the mentality of
today’s Chinese strategic elites or leaders, as compared with
Western or Russian strategic elites? What about the mentality of
the next generation of Chinese strategic elites?

Comparisons are always invidious, so let me just speak about
China. The current Chinese leadership is both very confident and
somewhat insecure – confidence and insecurity being two sides of
a single coin and the consequence of justifiable pride in what
China has achieved, as well as an acute awareness of China’s
internal and external vulnerabilities. This makes China’s leaders
ambitious but prudent – which in turn makes for stability.

My fear about the next generation, however, is that they will
begin to believe their own propaganda about China’s rise meaning
America’s inevitable decline. And it is when you believe your own
propaganda that miscalculations occur.

It is simply not true that America is on a trajectory of absolute
decline. The changes in the distribution of global power are
relative, not absolute. And while the US will never be as
pre-eminent as before, American society remains highly resilient
and creative. Of course, if we judge the US only by what happens
in Washington, DC, we might be forgiven for overstating or
oversimplifying the country’s decline. But while American
politics are now somewhat dysfunctional, the most important
things in the US quite often take place outside of the political
capital: in the 50 states, in research laboratories, in
universities and in corporations. Indeed, all those who have
underestimated American creativity and resilience in the past
have come to regret it.

US
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right,
arrive for a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in
Hamburg, Germany, Saturday, July 8, 2017.Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP

Having said this, it would also be a mistake to underestimate
Chinese creativity, or Indian or Japanese or European creativity,
or indeed Russian stamina and political will. It would be a
mistake, too, to see this as just a simple binary, zero-sum
situation between the US and China, where one country’s gain is
necessarily the other country’s loss. The situation may not be
quite multipolar – if by that we imply a rough parity between the
various poles. It will instead be far messier for some time
still, where it will be difficult for any pole – whether the US
or China or any other country – to act unilaterally. This is a
situation akin to what Ian Bremmer has called a “G-Zero world”.

For the last 200 years or so, the basic issue confronting the
non-Western world was how to adapt to a Western-dominated
international order. That order is now being changed by the very
success of some non-Western states – China being the most
notable, but by no means the only example: Meiji Japan led the
way, only to be joined subsequently by the so-called Asian Tigers
and India, in adapting to the Western order. By adapting to this
order, these countries changed it. But what will replace the
Western order is as yet unclear. I doubt that it will be an
‘Asian order’ – whatever that may mean. Meanwhile, the
interregnum may be very long indeed. There may never be any clear
replacement of the Western order. We shall see.

ON CHINA’S TIES WITH THE WORLD

Question: Do you foresee possible conflict between
China and India in the coming year or two?

No, I do not. There may be skirmishes, but both have too much to
lose. The priorities of both countries are internal, and both
China and India are mature civilisations – well able to manage
such tensions and minor conflicts.

Question: What does China think of the present
political situation in the U. S.?

My guess is that the Chinese are as baffled and concerned as
everyone else. They may be a little gleeful to have some of the
flaws of Western democracy exposed, but this is little more than
a quite understandable and
superficial Schadenfreude.

President
Donald Trump welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago
state in Palm Beach, Florida.Reuters/Carlos Barria

More essentially, while they project confidence, the Chinese are
as worried as anyone else about the possible consequences for
China in the event that the present US-led world order should
fall apart.

When Xi Jinping stood up at Davos in January 2017 and delivered
an eloquent defence of globalisation, it was actually a defence
of the US-led order (for which ‘globalisation’ is a shorthand
term) and an implicit admission that there is no real alternative
to this American-led order. After all, China has been among the
greatest beneficiaries of globalisation and the post-cold war
US-led order. It follows that China would be among the biggest
losers if that order should crumble or the world should become
protectionist. And the stakes are arguably higher for China than
for the rest of us, as the legitimacy of CCP rule rests on
growth, and China’s continued growth depends on the world
remaining open.

China cannot replace the US as the leader of the current world
order for the simple reason that in order to lead an open
order, you must yourself be open. Xi
Jinping’sBelt and Road initiativeis a
bold and ambitious vision. But it is not a substitute for the
current order because it plainly rests on the foundation of the
current order. Can the initiative succeed if the world turns
protectionist? Can it succeed if China gets into a trade war
with the US?

Thus far, the CCP under Xi Jinping has opted for more
central control rather than more economic openness or more room
for the market to operate in key sectors. Here, too, China is
in a dilemma. Beijing knows that the next stage of Chinese
growth depends on giving the market a greater role in key
sectors of the economy in order to make it more competitive. At
the same time, the CCP wants to maintain tight central control.
Can this circle be squared? No one knows. But we should all
hope that the CCP succeeds, as I see no practical alternative
to CCP rule for China. All the alternatives are worse.